MEDIA: Reviews: Home

Australian Rolling Stone magazine: **** stars (out of *****)

review by John Swenson - from October 1990 issue (#448)

Liam O'Maonlai, the golden-maned vocalist and songwriter who fronts Hothouse
Flowers, has the kind of vision evidenced in only a few popular musicians of
each generation. In performace he alternates the unchecked physical fury of a
Jim Morrison with the oratorical zeal of a roadside preacher. On record he
subjugates this persona to the songs themselves, which he delivers with
reverent, emotional precision, and this is where his vision becomes apparent.
In the space of two full-length recordings, O'Maonlai has constructed a
worldview.

This set of songs is called Home for good reasons. O'Maonlai is on an odyssey,
searching for home, aware of the obsession to make his own way but unwilling to
surrender his roots. It's a poet's quest, and O'Maonlai undertakes it in the
spirit of his lyric forebears - Yeats, Joyce and O'Casey; Dylan, Springsteen
and Ronnie Van Zandt.

Perhaps he is closest in spirit to Van Zandt, the restless lyric poet of
Southern rock. Like Van Zandt, O'Maonlai is an outsider at the crossroads of
the Western world. Instead of hailing from the rural swamps of Florida,
O'Maonlai is a Dubliner, informed by the pop culture of both London and New York
yet tied to the secret knowledge of his homeland's heritage.

The world O'Maonlai writes about appears hopelessly bleak - "Hardstone City",
where "you gotta carry a gun", could easily be an Irish immigrant's view of
contemporary New York. O'Maonlai explores different escapes from this world:
the realm of fantasy ("Movies") or the conviviality of the barroom (the CD-only
"Trying To Get Through").

O'Maonlai offers hope in the end through such ancient virtues as love and
generosity. In "Give It Up" he urges the listener to "Share it out/Help who you
can/Talk about it". Then, in "Christchurch Bells", he turns a simple laborer's
lament into a metaphor for the human search for acceptance.

O'Maonlai shifts credit for his band's vision to the other members, and the
hand-in-glove spirit of their sound underscores the claim. They play the
pop-gospel song "I Can See Clearly Now" and the Gaelic ballad "Seoladh Na
nGhamhna" with equal aplomb, forcing a comparative view of two forms that sound
so at home together here.

Many of the great Irish rock bands, from Thin Lizzy to Moving Hearts, have
flourished briefly only to founder under the burdens of creativity - too many
personal problems, too many directions to take. Hothouse Flowers just might
have the tenacity to make it all the way.

Hot Press: 8/12

review by Bill Graham - 1990

It is, of course, exceedingly easy to ridicule the Flowers. Hardly Irish
modernists they've often come across as dream-dazed in their Celtic haze, a band
whose emotions have outstripped their creative sense and whose neo-hippie
leanings actually owe less to Timothy Leary, San Francisco et al than
to the juvenilia of the early Yeats before he most belatedly lost both his
virginity and feyness at 29.

But "Home" should leave their fans happy and ensure a few new converts. It may
not be a conclusive masterpiece but it definitely shows the Flowers developing
with a new technical assurance and generally eradicating the faults that
bedevilled their their debut on tracks like the clumsy "Feet on the Ground".
Moreover, once they reach the second side, the Flowers also successfully extend
their range as they wisely move away from the original Celtic soul inspirations
that motivated them.

Still "Home" begins with familiar fare. You could argue that the initial
Flowers' had two songs, the slow one and the whirlwind piano-driven stomper and
the opening cut "Hardstone City" is literally breathless as Liam O'Maonlai's
paino hurtles headlong for the tape, whilst his vocals also markedly and nakedly
show the influence of that lost seventies leader Tim Buckley.

Indeed there are initial moments when "Home" actually seems like a solo
O'Maonlai album with his piano foremost in the mix. Nonetheless it isn't 'till
the side reaches the closing cut, the Daniel Lanois-produced "Shut Up And
Listen", that we get a real bolt of the blues.

Compare that track with the earlier ballad, "Sweet Marie." The latter is
intense, a Big Statement, but it's almost as if O'Maonlai's emotionality
actually derails the song and the arrangement, rather like a mountaineer who's
got trapped on a ledge short of the summit and can't go either back or forward.

But Lanois isn't interested in O'Maonlai as another Irish performer contesting
the emotional Olympics. Instead he draws a more conversational, intimate vocal
from the singer that suits rather than scuttles the song. And with Lanois' own
atmospheric dobro also colouring the piece we finally hear a band who don't
automatically emotionally overreach.

Similarly inventive are tracks like "Movies", "Eyes Wide Open" and "Water" on
the second side. The former is clipped by Noel Eccles' percussion and all three
tracks show the Flowers comfortably expending their rhythm range and breaking
out of old patterns.

"Eyes Wide Open" gives Fiachna O'Braonain the spotlight for some flikering
acoustic guitar while "Water" must be the album's most fascinating track, the
first Irish-Islamic song steered along by guests Philip Pyke on didgeridoo and
Nawalith Ali Khan on fiddle, alongside the band's own chanted harmonies. If all
the rest of "Home" had failed, both "Water" and "Shut Up And Listen" would
certify the Flowers' future.

Some faults remain. Lyrical wit is still lacking - you wouldn't employ them as
copywriters - and the one cover, "I Can See Clearly Now", exemplifies the
shortcomings of their Big Vision as they barrel off again into one of those
passionately sprinting instrumental passages that are probably intended as a
facsimile of the gospel experience - in this instance the effect is merely to
fracture the delicacy and sweetness in Johnny Nash's original.

But, produced by Paul Barrett, the title track "Home" is a ballad that does
work and when O'Maonlai signs off with a traditional cameo, "Seoladh na nGamhna"
we definitely have returned to first base with profit. This album may not be
perfect but this long time sceptic is at last prepared to accept that the
Flowers might yet become the class act their champions have long claimed.

Since their slightly disappointing debut album, People, the Hothouse Flowers
have been somewhat less than prolific in the vinyl output department and
instead have concentrated on establishing themselves with tours of America,
Europe and Japan. This suggests that they're happier and best appreciated
within the sweatily atmospheric surroundings of a concert, in pub, stadium or
club, then they are on record. Their second offering, featuring a squad of
producers, including Langer and Winstanley, Daniel Lanois and Paul Barrett
(who worked with U2 on the Clockwork Orange soundtrack) seems to confirm that
view. Despite some strong material, notably the swaggering barrelhouse gait of
Hardstone City, impassioned new single Give It Up, Shut Up and Listen's
poignant lyricism and silken slide guitar and the tear-stained balladry of
Sweet Marie, plus a typically passionate and gutsy performance from frontman
Liam O'Maonlai, whose vocals and keyboard work get better by the minute, Home
lacks that indefinable quality that transforms the good into the great. Maybe
next time.

Stereo Review

November 1990

"...a bottomless work that marries traditional folk, knockabout rock, and
feverish gospel in the service of a deep Celtic yearning for a rooted,
meaningful existence in a tarnished world....the music is a rich interweaving
of electric rock and ethnic folk instruments."